Now festival and other apps can generate audio output regardless if a user is logged into X.

Revision as of 22:43, 22 January 2013

Pogo is the name of the system we keep running for services in the space. Generally we try to keep it in a running state as much as possible.

Services Pogo provides

Internal webserver/fileserver

External webserver via dynamic dns

Shell accounts

RFID access management (RFID operates independently)

Gateway between RFID system and IRC via doorbot

Audio and Text annunciation to people within the space

LDAP (still experimental)

Notes on pulseaudio setup

Previously only a user logged in through X could get audio output on pogo. This is necessary for fun audio stuff like letting the RFID system greet members when they badge into the space.

This is how to get pulseaudio working on pogo so anyone logged in can launch sound from the command line. Note that this is not normally how pulseaudio is supposed to run, in fact the pulseaudio folks explicitly state this is bad and not supported, it's only allowed for strange setups like what we actually need for our use of it on pogo.

aplay: main:545: audio open error: Connection refused
This happens because pulseaudio requires authentication before accepting connections to prevent random people from playing audio on your computer. Pulseaudio places a cookie in the home directories of the user running the server. Copy the cookie of the machine you want to send the audio data to, to the home directory of the sender machine. (Alternatively, you may add auth-anonymous=1 to the end of the load-module module-native-protocol-tcp line to disable authentication). You are ready to play networked audio using pulseaudio.

First verify console kit is installed, there are other ways to use pulseaudio but this is what was working with pulseaudio as of today: